


what i can't have

by protagbian



Category: Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena
Genre: F/M, also this is unbeta'd i wrote this because i could not focus on my (very...VERY) easy homework, so forgive any errors and excuse the ugly formatting! i'm losing my fucking mind, there is a distinct lack of consent here but adding that tag is....inaccurate we'll say, this is very vague but if you've finished the series you probably know who this is about
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-05 17:10:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16371707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/protagbian/pseuds/protagbian
Summary: "i always want what i can't have," he says, and it is in this moment anthy understands the scope and full nature of god.she becomes an atheist.





	what i can't have

The first time it happens, she is supposed to be sleeping.

  
It’s a beginning of sorts, something minor and menial. A buildup to something greater, she supposes, when she reflects on it.  
She does not reflect on it often.

The first time it happens, she hears sheets rustle, the sound of movement, the feeling of a leg a shade identical pressed to her own as if magnetized, unable to resist the law of attraction any longer. Now, knees touching knees, hands interlocked, she is afraid. The wild beast of fear in her heart, a tigress untamed, begins to prowl around the two, back arched, tail flicking, teeth bared, ready to pounce at the first opportunity.

A cornered animal, reduced to primal instinct, can never survive the hunt.

She feels a hand trace the curvature of her face, sweep her jaw, her lips. She wills herself to be silent, to breathe deeply, to be _asleep_. In, out, in, out, the rhythm of her breathing does not match her frantic heartbeat, but she cannot let him know. She will not let him know. She lays, eyes closed, and waits for sunrise.

 

The second time it happens, it is the same night. She is beginning to wonder if she is an insomniac.

She has turned over, now, her back turned to his body. By now, he has placed an arm over her waist, as if to claim her as his, but for who? They are the only ones in the room, and even so, no one would dare question the legitimacy of his rights to her body, her being, her soul–she was but an extension of his self, she simply an adorning side piece. She exists through him, within him, but not alone.

He draws her body closer to him, pulls himself closer, locks their bodies like two puzzle pieces that were meant to be together. She pleads internally with God, with Time, with anyone who can hear her that her alarm will ring soon.

  
The third time it happens, she has turned to face him once more. She would have remained facing the other way, in the arms of safety as opposed to in the arms of….

Her side and back ache, as does her neck, and she needs the pillow, which meant she needed to face him once more. Dependent once more.

His hand pushes gently into hers once more and she ignores her instinctive twitch to solidify the grip, pretending her grasp is weak and ineffective. Her eyes twitch as well, her breathing shudders ever so slightly, but she pretends it is the ever changing rhythm of sleep, the irregular drumbeat she cannot ever possibly define, and she hopes he does not notice.

She feels her hand, that delicate, dainty, _accursed_ right hand, being drawn up by her knight in tarnished armor, then feels the lightest touch.

A kiss.  
Gravity draws her consciousness into every agonizing second, heightens her awareness of every contact point, and she takes comfort in knowing her clothes are long.

 

The fourth time it happens, she is begging for mercy to a God she is slowly forgetting to believe in.

She is still facing him; her body, still pained, betrays her, and she has moved one too many times before. And so she remains stock still, pretending she is deeply entangled within the web of sleep–method acting in the most severe scenario imaginable. He traces her face again, as if he has not memorized the curvature and indents of it from seeing it so many times before, from cradling her face in broad daylight as if the world outside did not know or could not see.

He moves within the shadow of the night, the world outside silenced and the world within holding bated breath minus his own.  
She does not want to remember what he does.

 

Officially, she wakes up twice.

The first time, there is a noise; she knows it not to be her alarm, and lets it slip that it is so without realizing, cursed with the burden of truth. She cannot think. She is running on the most basic of processes.

The second time, she is facing the window, watching the light that abandoned her mere hours ago return the room to color and to life. She has been watching the clock tick onwards, counting hours, minutes, seconds until the gates unlock and she is free––when she hears the first note of the alarm, she has already stopped it, is rising from her consummate-death-bed muttering apologies while gathering her clothes and feigning the beginnings of alertness.

He rises too, and she distantly notices the startling similarity to a morning after image the two of them make.

She reciprocates no affection in her haste to leave.

 

Alone, in the privacy of her own home, she purifies herself with scalding water and scrubs her skin raw; she emerges a different woman, tainted and tattered, eyes and mind darkened to the world around her.

 

Officially, she is pure, an angel dressed in white, the innocent lamb who will never be sent to slaughter.

But the first time it happens, she is awake. She is aware.

And she is never the same again.

**Author's Note:**

> highkey a vent fic LOL!  
> i left it ambiguous enough that it could apply to anthy though what happened to me is not what happened to her. i suppose you could say it probably started the same way  
> regardless if you've ever been in a situation like this i want you to know that you are not alone, i am here for you, and i will support you until my dying breath and if you need someone to talk to about this you can always, always talk to me


End file.
